APA6 Class - Single-spaced Tables for Manuscript

Question

I'm trying to produce a manuscript for submission. I have tables that are fairly long and need to be single spaced. The apa6 class is double-spacing the entire document including the tables. I need double-spaced body text and single-spaced tables. My previous version of the document, before I tried apa6, invoked the endfloat package and the spacing was what I needed. As an aside, the apa6 manual suggests tables can be either single or double spaced. Can I request this format from the class?

Answer 1

apa6 does not a provide a float-specific spacing as a document class option (see section 3.1 Class Options of the apa6 documentation, p 2). However, it loads the etoolbox package by default which provides \AtBeginEnvironment{<env>}{<stuff>} that hooks into and adds <stuff> at \begin{<env>}. So, you can use

\usepackage{setspace}% http://ctan.org/pkg/setspace
\AtBeginEnvironment{tabular}{\singlespacing}% Single spacing in tabular environment

Although it is not necessary to load use the setspace interface for \singlespacing in this case, it is just for convenience. If you're not allowed to use setspace, you could also just use

\makeatletter
\AtBeginEnvironment{tabular}{%
  \def\baselinestretch{1}\@currsize}%
\makeatother

Here is a minimal example using the former setspace adjustment:

\documentclass[man,floatsintext]{apa6}% http://ctan.org/pkg/apa6
\shorttitle{Some title}% Dummy title
\usepackage{lipsum}% http://ctan.org/pkg/lipsum
\usepackage{setspace}% http://ctan.org/pkg/setspace
% Already loaded by the apa6 documentclass...
% \usepackage{etoolbox}% http://ctan.org/pkg/etoolbox
\AtBeginEnvironment{tabular}{\singlespacing}% Single spacing in tabular environment
\begin{document}
\lipsum[1]
\begin{table}[ht]
  \begin{tabular}{ccccccc}
    \toprule
    One & Two & Three & Four & Five & Six & Seven \\
    \midrule
    100 & 200 & 300 & 400 & 500 & 600 & 700 \\
    100 & 200 & 300 & 400 & 500 & 600 & 700 \\
    100 & 200 & 300 & 400 & 500 & 600 & 700 \\
    100 & 200 & 300 & 400 & 500 & 600 & 700 \\
    100 & 200 & 300 & 400 & 500 & 600 & 700 \\
    \bottomrule
  \end{tabular}
  \caption{This is a table.}
\end{table}
\end{document}

lipsum was merely used to create dummy text Lorem Ipsum style.

Answer 2

I don't know the apa6 class and its options, but you can do it manually with the following code. I suggest to create an environment which creates the table and formats the font, spacing and so on. These changes effects only the environment/table and switched back after leaving the environment.

\documentclass{apa6}
\usepackage{longtable}
\usepackage{lipsum}
\usepackage{setspace}

\newenvironment{myTable}%
{%
    \footnotesize
    \singlespace
    \setlength\tabcolsep{1.5ex}
    % other formating stuff
    \begin{longtable}{p{5cm}p{5cm}p{5cm}}
    Column 1 &Column 2 &Column 3\\
    \hline
}%
{%
    \end{longtable}
}%


\doublespace
\begin{document}
\lipsum[1]

\begin{myTable}
    \lipsum[1]&\lipsum[1]&\lipsum[1]\\
\end{myTable}

\lipsum[1]
\end{document}